The Philadelphia Flyers badly need adequate reinforcements on defense, and what better way to get them than for free from the NHL waiver wire?
After passing on Victor Soderstrom towards the end of training camp and the preseason, the Flyers again will have an opportunity to claim a young player with some pedigree and throw a dart at the void that is their defense.
On Sunday, it was announced that the San Jose Sharks had placed defenseman Jack Thompson on waivers, exposing him to the Flyers and the other 30 NHL teams.
Yes, he was just cut from the Sharks, of all teams, but at just 23 years old, there’s plenty to like about Thompson and what he could potentially bring to the table, even for a brief cameo.
After appearing in just three NHL games prior, Thompson broke through for the Sharks last season, playing 31 games in San Jose and scoring four goals, six assists, and 10 points while bouncing around between the Sharks and the AHL Barracuda.
Between the AHL and the NHL, the former third-round pick scored a total of seven goals, 17 assists, and 24 points in 58 games.
In the 2023-24 season, playing for the Tampa Bay Lightning AHL affiliate Syracuse Crunch, Thompson produced a solid five goals, 27 assists, and 32 points in 46 games.
At 6-foot-2, Thompson is neither particularly nimble nor physical; his skating metrics from last season rank below the 50th percentile in nearly every category, according to NHL EDGE, while he made just 12 hits in 31 games with the Sharks.
What Thompson can bring the Flyers, however, is the ability to move the puck and defend at a level that was high enough to look decent on a team like San Jose.
The right-shot blueliner could conceivably carve out an NHL career as a bottom-four defenseman with some improvements to skating and/or the addition of a physical element, which the Flyers were looking for and haven’t gotten from Helge Grans yet.
The Egor Zamula, Adam Ginning, and Noah Juulsen experiments haven’t worked out at all so far, and the Flyers have already decided they’d rather see Emil Andrae than Dennis Gilbert on the NHL roster after the first two games of the year.
Should the Flyers successfully claim Thompson off waivers from the Sharks, they add another young and fairly experienced player to the fold with some semblance of offensive upside.
That’s more than what they can say about most other internal options at the position at the moment.
